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No Region Codes for HD-DVD? 233

Posted by Zonk from the that-would-be-nice dept.
MBCook writes "According to Engadget something interesting has come out of the DVD Forum Conference 2005 in Japan. Here is the line from the post we've all been waiting for: 'But one statement from Toshiba Digital Media Networks' Hisashi Yamada was particularly intriguing: "We've gotten a variety of opinions about region controls. Even in the Steering Committee, they are extremely unpopular; we decided to not put them in. HD DVD probably won't contain any region playback controls."' Source: Japanese, English (via Google's Language Tools)."
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No Region Codes for HD-DVD? More

No Region Codes for HD-DVD?

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  • Whoa. (Score:3, Informative)

    by greyjoy ( 912923 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @01:50PM (#13747256)
    If Blu-Ray doesn't match this, I think Toshiba just got a LOT more popular.

    • Re:Whoa. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Yocto Yotta ( 840665 ) * <catapults.musicNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:03PM (#13747310)
      That's probably the collective HD-DVD camp's line of thinking. Then when the standard gain's mass-movement, region lock-in gets slipped back into the standard because of newly founded "concerns" from the content producers. All the pros (of course, aside from the very real cost-, and very arguable format structure- benefit)that the format has going for it suddenly disappear.

      Let's hear it for marketing! Yay!

      And now again for speculative opinion! Yay!

  • Finally (Score:5, Interesting)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @01:51PM (#13747259) Homepage
    Does this mean we can import and play the HD-DVDs of movies that have yet to come out in the theatre here in Europe? (without special hardware)

    I wonder what the movie industry thinks about this.
    • I'm sure the movie industry will lobby for (i.e., buy) legislation to prohibit this. Then we will have yet another situation of thousands or millions of people doing something and a tiny minority getting selected at random to be made examples of. Orrin Hatch, call your office.

      Let's face it, the U.S. Congress is Hollywood's bitch, and if Hollywood don't like it, I'm sure we will see some legislative action.

      • Re:Finally (Score:2, Informative)

        by EiZei ( 848645 )
        At least they have done it here (Finland) to some extent already, a recently passed law forbids selling/distributing DVDs that have been acquired from outside EU/ETA.
        • I can't figure out who this serves. Oh, well, we keep electing these people, and they keep using the system against us.

          I'm sure there will be some alternative that makes up for the lack of region code here in the U.S. too.

    • I wonder what the movie industry thinks about this.

      Recently: "We must release them at the same time already" In fact, in many cases it's been so nuts they have had the exact same release *time*. The market has spoken, and I don't know about you but I don't consider everyday consumer electronics found in major stores to be "specialized hardware". You make it sound like it was some kind of shady modchip or something.
    • That is the most obvious thing I have ever seen modded above +2. Yes. Yes it does mean you can play HD-DVDs without region controls. Read the subject. Furthermore, I would expect that the movie industry is probably unhappy.

    • Does this mean we can import and play the HD-DVDs of movies that have yet to come out in the theatre here

      In Australia the local branch of Warner Bros was trying to get the government to stop a US branch of Warner Bros from sending in region 1 DVDs of movies that had not yet seen a cinema release. Multi-region players are of course perfectly legal in Australia and perfectly legal in the countries that actually manufacture DVD players. The whole concept of region coding was a poorly thought out marketing h

  • ok, I like HD DVD now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @01:52PM (#13747263) Homepage
    at least one copy can be made to an electronic format, and no region encoding? sweet!!!

    I hope Apple jumps on this because then they could have all they need for a video iPod

  • Japanese English? (Score:4, Funny)

    by DavidBartlett ( 748559 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @01:52PM (#13747264)
    Japanese English? [engrish.com]

  • Competition may be producing good results (Score:4, Interesting)

    by angryflute ( 206793 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @01:58PM (#13747291) Homepage
    Looks like the competition between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD may benefit consumers in the end after all. Now let's see what Sony offers the consumer with Blu-Ray to convince us to go with them first.
    • You wish. Hardware companies have always hated region controls. But Sony isn't just a hardware company — it owns movie studios and record companies.
    • The consumer doesn't really have a choice in this. Hollywood likes the region code regardless if it makes sense or not. If HD-DVD doesn't have region codes and Blue Ray does then movies won't get released on HD-DVD and Blue Ray wins.

      In this battle the tech companies have to suck up to the content providers not the consumer. The consumer will get stuck with whoever kisses Hollywood's ass the best.

      NOTE: I don't know if Blue Ray actually does have support for region codes but I'm sure someone here does.
      • You're mostly right, but consumers do have SOME say. If there is enough content available on HD-DVD (at least 2 studios have committed to it, and nobody knows what porn will do yet) and the players and movies are available before Blu-Ray; IF consumers choose to buy HD-DVD then it may get enough of an install base that the other studios will have to produce movies for it because they can't turn away from revenue.

        On the other hand, if there is enough confusion, consumers may not buy anything and they all lo

  • The real reason... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday October 08, 2005 @01:59PM (#13747294) Homepage Journal
    ...is that they're not supplying region code "functionality" because region codes definitely have increased piracy as a whole. When someone in a given country can't get a DVD because its not available in their market yet, they'll more likely just download the movie.

    Region coding worked fine before information traveled so fast and so easily. You'll also see European release dates much closer to the U.S. release dates for the same reason -- if the movie isn't in theatres in your market, just download a bootleg and see it first.

    Here again is another proof that information not only wants to be free, it wants to be available to everyone at the same time.
  • ... after all it seems to me that most movies these days are released close to the same time all over the world now, instead of being spaced apart in different regions. There is just less need for the studios to try to implement this control any longer.

    Didn't it used to be that a feature release movie in N. America took about 4-6 months before being released in Europe? The idea of region coding was that the movie could be in theatres in Europe, while already released to DVD in the U.S.

    Of course, leaving t
    • Of course, leaving the region coding off this new format could also be due to the fact that (as I understand it) the majority of DVD players outside of N. America just ignore the region code anyways.

      In the beginning, it was pretty expensive to get a dealer to mod your player to skip region encoding ($150). This was in 1997 or thereabouts and this is Norway. It's gotten a lot cheaper, but you still don't get region-free dvd players over the counter today, at least not the inexpensive varieties.

  • About region codes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El Cabri ( 13930 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:02PM (#13747303) Journal
    I've always found it interesting how region coding was giving an advantage to Hollywood movies. Everything out of Hollywood, even the least interesting tripe, gets released in other region codes than north America, notably in the Europe/Japan zone (2). On the other hand, only a relatively few movies from Europe and Japan get an "American release" on Zone 1 DVDs. Hence the zoning works as a one-way filter and keeps American consumers from most foreign movies.

    The theater release date argument toward zoning is not good because more and more of the most anticipated movies have worldwide release, and also because then why would zoning apply to old classics and other pre-dvd era movies that are still to be released ?

    • Re:About region codes (Score:5, Informative)

      by RexRhino ( 769423 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:38PM (#13747453)
      The lack of Zone 1 DVDs from Europe is the result of the European distributors wanting to get licencing fees from U.S. distributers. It is possible to manufacture your DVDs as region 0 (all regions). The company I used to work for manufactured all it's DVDs that way, because they couldn't afford to create versions for each market. It doesn't cost a penny extra to make your DVD for all regions. And you can sell directly to the U.S. consumer via Amazon and Netflix who have no qualms about selling/renting obscure or foriegn titles.

      But that is not how it works for the big guys. A European company will not release an all-region DVD (unless they are a small niche company), they will try to find someone to purchase the North American rights to the film, and manufacutre and market it for North America.
    • It's also about differential pricing, setting a price in one marketand a different one in another. If anyone remembers Euro conversion, they may remember all the differential prices exposed, and a lot of consumers complaining about buying the same thing for one price in one country and for more expensive in another. Before the Euro it was hidden somewhat, after it became more obvious.

      Yesterday I was ina camera store, two girls from Brazil were about to buy a camera. I had to laugh, because I remember b

  • And the people rejoiced. (Score:4, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:03PM (#13747307) Homepage
    And the people rejoiced.
    And the movie industry rejected HD-DVD.

  • unpopular but creates PROFIT (Score:5, Insightful)

    by E8086 ( 698978 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:03PM (#13747312)
    DRM is even more unpopular but it's being used even more.
    Region codes may seem ridiculous and bothersome to the consumer, but it prevents us from ordering movies and games from less well off places where they're sold for maybe $2 instead of paying $10-$20 here. Unless the studios are willing to release material with a global price of 20 US dollars it's not going to happen. Or maybe they'll just change the name, it won't be called "region codes" by name but there will be something in place to restrict the playing of foreign movies and games. There's just too much money involved to scrap it.
    • but it prevents us from ordering movies and games from less well off places where they're sold for maybe $2 instead of paying $10-$20 here

      I would imagine if there are places where people are paying $1 or $2 for movies or games, they are bootleg in the first place. I agree that region encoding was always about screwing the consumer, but I don't think your logic is correct. I'm sure there will be something to offset the benefits of no region codes. I'm betting Hollywood will buy some ill-conceived, indefen

    • Re:unpopular but creates PROFIT (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why should corporations get to benefit from a global economy (ie: outsourced labor, cheap labor, inexpensive materials) and not consumers? Consumers should have the right to import things cheaply from abroad if they so desire.

    • Re:unpopular but creates PROFIT (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "it prevents us from ordering movies and games from less well off places where they're sold for maybe $2 instead of paying $10-$20 here"

      So why can employers get away with paying employees $2 an hour in other countries, instead of being made to pay $20 an hour here?
      I'm not bashing outsourcing, I'm just curious what the difference is...

    • Re:unpopular but creates PROFIT (Score:4, Interesting)

      by El Cabri ( 13930 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:38PM (#13747450) Journal
      Interestingly enough, it's not in less "well-off" markets that DVDs are cheaper. The pricing of "virtual" goods seems to be a very mysterious topic. It probably boils down to just "how much are people ready to pay ?". DVDs in Europe tend to be more expensive than in the US, even before factoring the VAT in, even though Europeans have less disposable income in general. But maybe they are just willing to spend more. You can make as much profit or even more by selling less units each at a higher prices. On the other hand, Europeans get "luxury packagings" with nice custom packs more often.

      Moreover, the European market is further artificially segmented into separate markets because different editions of the same movies will have different dubbing and subtitles available.

  • You know? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by taskforce ( 866056 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:05PM (#13747322) Homepage
    I think we've been conned. When BluRay and HDDVD were first compared, we were shown the capacities and speeds. BluRay was hugely superior. Now we've been told about BDROM's DRM which doesn't even allow streaming of content, and that HDDVD doesn't have any region codes and requires (albeit DRM'd) ripping to PC, which is at least better than the current DVD format. I have always supported BDROM becuase of the superior capacity etc, but over the past week taking into account the developments which have come to light I'm starting to seriously rethink which side I'm taking.

    Obviously, it could just be a case of HDDVD seeing how unpopular they are and making some changes to their strategy late in the day to get some support which they wouldn't have done if we hadn't originally shunned them.

    • I have the sneaking suspicion that HD-DVD is going to eventually come out the winner in this next round of format wars. While BluRay is technically superior, they're close enough that it may just come down to HD-DVD's being slightly cheaper. Being non region-encoded will help a lot. It's like they're appologizing for slapping us in the face last time, and promising they'll never do it again. Not that I believe it, but it's nice to hear.

      Of course, they could both fall flat on their faces. While DVD's pr
    • actually name something about bluray that is technically superior to hd-dvd other than the capacity?

      they both use the same laser frequency, they're both using blue lasers as well. they also use the same codecs (avc, vc-1,mpeg4)

      there to my knowledge isn't anything more to warrant an "etc" in your post.

      unless i'm mistaken...
    • Obviously, it could just be a case of HDDVD seeing how unpopular they are and making some changes to their strategy late in the day to get some support which they wouldn't have done if we hadn't originally shunned them.

      Well, it's at least preferable to see they fighting over pleasing consumers rather than pleasing copyright holders for a change. Whether or not this ia a big change can also be discussed, since there are zone-free players sold in pretty much all zones except the US. I'm sure it has caused mor
  • I have been wondering why they had a region code in the first place for DVDs. I mean, you have purchased the media -- if you migrate to another country, are you supposed to trash the media and buy a new copy for your region? What person on a commitee thought this was a good idea, any why?

    • Re:Region code purpose (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jetson ( 176002 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:15PM (#13747364) Homepage
      Although many people point to release dates and argue that regions were to prevent someone from importing a movie that was still in local theatres, I think a much larger factor was the general standard of living. Region coding allowed the studios to charge higher prices in regions that had higher standards of living without pricing themselves out of the market in economically depressed regions.
  • what, blue-laser disks aren't serialized that way?!

  • All I Want for Christmas... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fossa ( 212602 ) <pat7@g[ ]net ['mx.' in gap]> on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:18PM (#13747374) Journal

    What I want in a DVD player (or any movie player):

    1. Play videos from any "region"
    2. Ignore Macrovision
    3. Allow skipping of FBI warning, etc.

    I managed to get a DVD player that can do the first two (it also does PAL->NTSC conversion), but not the last (and I actually have an old TV with only coax input, so I must run the DVD (at the time, the DVD only had RCA analog out) through a VHS player which doesn't work due to Macrovision; I've been bitten and I wasn't even trying to copy... luckily I also have an old VHS player that doesn't have auto-tracking, woohoo).

    I absolutely abhor shopping for these things because it's such an effort to do the research and find something that works how I want it to. It's tough being a discerning shopper. Is there a DVD player that can skip "non-skippable" things? Can I do this from Linux (in which case, is there a DVD drive that is region free? I assume Macrovision isn't an issue... even if I were to record analog with a VHS deck...).

    So, yay to no region codes, but to the current DVD player shopping: AAAAAAAAAAAH!! #%$@!

    • AFAIK, the open-source Linux DVD players (such as Xine with libdvdcss) do tend to ignore UOPs (which are what mark sections as "non-skippable"), but are also illegal in the US (DMCA), and good luck with getting any sort of non-Macrovisioned TV out from Linux. You may need region-free firmware for your DVD-ROM drive to play DVDs from different regions, though apparently it's not always neccesary - I've never tried it either way.
      • The linux players work fine. I use MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu] which will let me just watch one track of the DVD, without having to mess about with menus at all. I've never watched the FBI warning crap since I started to use it.
        The firmware in my DVDROM driver is supposed to be region-locked, but I've never found a DVD that won't play.

        • The firmware in my DVDROM driver is supposed to be region-locked, but I've never found a DVD that won't play.

          Same here under FreeBSD.

          Plus: using vobcopy + DeCSS to dump the encrypted .VOB files to disk, speeding up playback AND reducing the strain on the DVDROM as well. The best MPlayer feature though is that you can skip by tiny amounts (10 secs, 1 minute, ...), not by whole big "scene" or "chapter" chunks that are being forced on the rest of the world.

    • Re:All I Want for Christmas... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @03:33PM (#13747686)
      Get a Pioneer DV-470 (or 525 if you need SACD and WMA support). It can play DivX files too (and show your JPEG photos). And after that, get a firmware update from

      http://mtz.softpedia.com/index.php?option=com_webl inks&catid=70&Itemid=4 [softpedia.com]

      And you can do all that you want.

      (The region-free part is actually in the standard firmware, you just need to activate it with some sort of IR signal (the guy who sold me one did it with a Palm Vx). But the Mtz firmware does all that and more, so just use it)
    • luckily I also have an old VHS player that doesn't have auto-tracking

      Auto-tracking is to do with the alignment of the heads with the video tape. I doubt it comes into play when all you're doing is using your video recorder as an RF modulator.

      Its the auto-gain-control that Macrovision messes with, and that's been standard in video recorders for a lot longer than auto-tracking.

    • Re:All I Want for Christmas... (Score:4, Informative)

      by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:52PM (#13748270)
      3. Allow skipping of FBI warning, etc.
      "xine dvd://3" or "mplayer dvd://3" will just play the third track, no menu, warnings or whatever (unless that happens to be the track you pick). On xine if you pick a track at random you can also right click and choose "root menu" to get to the main disk menu. Telling people about it may be against some stupid law pushed through by bribery by an industry group known for tax evasion on a massive scale, but it's perfectly legal in most countries.
      in which case, is there a DVD drive that is region free
      Most have region free firmware available somewhere, since they are manufactured outside of the USA and are also sold outside of the USA where having region free drives is perfectly legal (and sometimes the default).
  • I think broadband internet and region-free players have made both region coding and staggered releases less desirable. I'm really hoping that the movie industry sees the light, because while staggered releases used to make sense (I didn't say good for the customer, I said made sense):

    1) The "big selling season" for movies has been spreading across the calendar - it may be that we're heading toward a year-round market. (Obviously there are movies all year, but the big summer and winter seasons are no longer
  • I think this says a lot about the intelligence of the people creating todays DVDs.

    Region codes was a bad idea to start off with. There are a lot of DVDs released that get region coding that will never ever be released for the remaining regions, thus cutting themselfs out of a huge market. All DVDs produced here in sweden inevitably get a region 2 coding, although they will never be released outside of europe. This means that I can never buy any of these DVDs for my friends in the US, even though they put en

    • (Separate reply for separate issue.)

      And it seems like the DVD producers have realized this since they are asking for regions to be removed for HDDVD. However, they are not smart enough to stop using region codes on normal DVDs!

      Actually there's a good reason. Music licensing contracts for current films often specify a territory because the DVD format allows enforcement of such contracts. This entices the music publishers and record labels to offer less expensive licenses for single-territory use than

  • Toshiba might well make HD-DVD region free, but don't expect Sony and Co to do the same with Blu-Ray. Sony will never implement a totally region free video format. I think even the UMD discs have region encoding.

    I was rooting for Blu-Ray, on the simple basis of higher technical standards. But now HD-DVD is offering me a lot more choice, and most likely lower cost imports. I've just been converted to the HD-DVD camp and all it took was one press release.

    See Sony. Consumers like it when you don't cripple their hardware with restrictions.
    • Had the same thoughts myself. Don't like anything that will help fund MS's plans to lock in people, and I liked the greater capacity Blu-Ray had. Not to mention the PS3 coming out with a BD drive. But this info could very well sway me from Blu-Ray (as a consumer).

  • Next slashdot Headline... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SwedeGeek ( 545209 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @02:30PM (#13747417) Homepage Journal
    RIAA Sues All Attendees of DVD Forum Conference 2005
  • I was in London last year for a couple of weeks and stumbled into a Virgin store or some mega-chain thing whatever it was. Anyway, lo-and-behold I stumbled on a gold mine of BBC classics on DVD, from Sci Fi to John Clease on Monty Python and Fawlty Towers and various other shows I was interested in. I was jazzed I picked up a basket and started shopping, I was ready to plunk down a huge chunk of change when I realized, oops..they won't play.

    I was so dissapointed. What a bummer. What good did this do any
    • Why didn't you just buy a DVD player at the same time? A cheap one only costs as much as 2 or 3 DVDs, and more or less every DVD player for sale in the UK is either region-free, or can be made so after a couple of minutes search on google.
      As far as I can tell from this discussion, this region coding crap is still enforced in the US. But it is certainly not enforced over here.

  • How region codes should work... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hackie_Chan ( 678203 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @03:04PM (#13747565)
    I'm in the middle of moving with my family from Europe to the United States. Besides the fact that things with electrical outlets won't work as everybody knows -- the very idea that I can't view my purchased movies I bought in this European country to play on my DVD player in the United States is absolutely ludicrous. It's not in a different "voltage", it's just a simple friggin' MPEG-file on a piece of plastic!

    Worse is that if I would ask around where to make my American DVD player region free they wouldn't help me due to the DMCA.

    Region codes were flawed from the start: It's not the discs that should be region locked, it ought be the DVD player. And it's not the DVD player that you should have changeable regions, it ought be the discs. We'd still have regions just like the movie companies want us to have -- but at least we'd be able to move from one continent to another and still use our completely legitimately purchased wares.

    But alas, since this is impossible due to obvious technological limitations, we ended up with this half-assed excuse we have today.

    • I'm in the middle of moving with my family from Europe to the United States. Besides the fact that things with electrical outlets won't work as everybody knows -- the very idea that I can't view my purchased movies I bought in this European country to play on my DVD player in the United States is absolutely ludicrous. It's not in a different "voltage", it's just a simple friggin' MPEG-file on a piece of plastic!

      You're obviously one of those skilled workers with skills that americans are too stupid to lea

  • What's sad about all the discussion over the features and lack of features in the competing standards for the next generation DVD, is this: not a shred of it is related to market demand. Customers aren't shouting, "We want region codes! We want the medium to be scrambled! We want a crypto interface between the player and the display device! We want there to be a scarcity of player implementations, where even our personal computers can't play it." The market isn't playing any role in this, except perhap
  • The hardware companies HATE having to deal with regional differences of any kind. They want to see a single product sold over a wide range of countries. DVD regions is a real pain for them and they solved it by making the facility a programmed function that could be set up by the distributer or dealer. The methods to do this leaked and the result is anybody who wants to can find the instructions to remove region controls from most DVD players.

    The software companies had different motivations at first becau

  • More than pointless (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bennini ( 800479 )
    Being a person that travels reguarly between North America, Europe and occasionally Africa, i can attest to you that DVD region codes have always been entirely pointless. The two main reasons region codes were implemented was A) to control movie/dvd release timings in various parts of the world and B) to prevent people from purchasing cheaper versions of DVDs from foreign countries.

    In actuality, neither of the above two have actually occured for the following reasons:
    The majority of the people that compl

  • Nail in HD-DVD's Coffin (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Myria ( 562655 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:15PM (#13748112)
    This is just the nail in HD-DVD's coffin. The studios are now going to flock straight to Blu-Ray with this announcement. Sucks but true.

    Melissa

    • Not necessarily... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by msimm ( 580077 )
      Major movies like the Matrix have made a big point of doing world-wide releases. Region coding was a bad idea, the consumers lose and the studios don't actually gain much of anything for it. Maybe it stopped a few people from ordering cheap DVD's from abroad. But really, those people who would would also be the people who knew how to bypass the coding anyway.

      It solved a problem that didn't really exsist and probably actually ended up costing the studios in lost revenue for potential niche markets.
  • ...they are going to replace it with something far more hidious. You guys are just too optimistic.

    ** Spoiler Warning for The Ring **

    I was just watching The Ring yesterday, and it occured to me that these days, if the MIAA got their wish, everybody would be dead, because nobody would be able to make a copy of the tape. In fact, the whole film wouldn't even work if the MIAA hat their say, because the audience would be going Make a copy? But nobody can do that! And it's illegal!

    Of course it might get r

    • Re:This only means... (Score:4, Funny)

      by z4ce ( 67861 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @09:16PM (#13748800)
      When I watched that movie, I wondered, "What are effects of digital media on analog evil". For example, when I watched the movie it was on DVD. Therefore, a copy was more than likely made in various caches in the system. Does that inhibit the evil on the VHS from attacking me? Or even at a more fundamental level, did the evil even survive the MPEG2 compression? Can any evil survive digitation?

      What about internet distribution? Does copying a DivX file grant you immunity? Do the router owner's between you and another computer gain immunity, even though they are not aware of the copy.

      Somebody needs to do their Ph.D. dissertation on this subject.

  • Mod Chips (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kahanamoku ( 470295 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @06:09PM (#13748324)
    Now that Mod Chips Are Legal [yahoo.com] who really cares about region codes? just wait for the DVD player mod chip!

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